Wednesday, October 10, 2001
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Wednesday, October 10, 2001 |
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2nd of 2: The barging puzzle solved By
SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
How do you pass a 1,200-foot tow through a 600-foot lock, without losing uncontrolled barges down the river? This was the puzzle I contemplated while the sun's heat baked me from above and bounced off the concrete of the observation deck at Kentucky Lock and Dam. The downstream gates were still open; through them I could see the previous vessel still within the guide wall. The upstream gates were closed, the traffic light above my head still flashing red. I was standing almost directly above the leading edge of the barges waiting to enter, and below me three ruddy deck hands in personal floatation devices (no longer called life jackets), lounged on the metal deck on the shady side of the forward barge. Their cargo was granite. I suppose someone, somewhere, has a manifest that would tell how much this payload weighed, but I would not hazard a guess. The rocks ranged in size from a fist to half a VW Beetle and in the middle of each barge were stacked seven or more feet high. The downstream gates closed, and slowly, silently water started flooding the chamber. When at last it was full, the upstream gates opened and, the gates at last snug in their recesses, the lockmaster gave the single "Enter" blast of his air horn and the flashing red light turned green. The crew began undoing lines, and the front edge of the barges began inching forward. Inching, truly. Little by little, the captain pushed his immense cargo into the lock. I had a clear view of the wall below my feet and I am not exaggerating: The side of the barges maintained exactly 10 inches from the lock wall their entire 600-foot length. With the first nine of the 15 barges inside the lock, the crew made fast to the bollards on the lock wall, then undid the intricate series of cables and turnbuckles that linked them to the remaining six. When the last cable lay slack on the deck, the pilot threw his huge pusher into reverse and pulled the load back just the length of the upstream gates. The lockmaster gave the customary siren blast to warn fishermen downstream that he was sending a chamberful of water their way. The mounds of boulders at our feet began to drop away from us as the water fell 57 feet. Only one deck hand now had responsibility for the nine forward barges. How was he going to get them out of the lock chamber and then hold them in place while the process began all over again to bring down the pusher and remaining barges? "Watch when the gates open, Dave," I joked. "Somebody has a rowboat down there to pull them out." The downstream gates opened and there was nothing in sight but the empty Tennessee River no auxiliary tug, no rowboat, not even a guy with a long pole. Yet as soon as the gates were fully open and the air horn signaled the all-clear, the deck hand undid his mooring line and the barges began inching out of the lock chamber. But how? We've spent many weeks, these past two years, on the rivers, and seen countless barges, some just entering locks, some leaving, but never have we seen a raft of barges floating loose on the water, waiting to be reunited with the rest of their load and their tow boat. Obviously, that can't happen. Nonetheless, the powerless barges were sliding out of the lock. I was beginning to think a crew had boarded when we weren't looking and was pushing hand over hand against the lock wall to move these thousands of tons into the river. To prove to ourselves that wasn't happening, we walked back again to the observation platform we'd left earlier, where we'd be able to see the stern of the slowly moving barges. Dave saw it first. "Look!" he said, pointing to the far wall of the chamber. Other onlookers who had watched the whole operation from that end looked at us as though we were mildly idiotic. It was so obvious, so simple that maybe they were right. In a high-tech world, some things are still best done the old-fashioned way. A hawser tied the stern of the last barge to a large cleat traveling in a groove the length of the chamber wall the modern equivalent of a tow horse and a hidden motor was slowly dragging the whole lash-up forward through the open downstream gate. When the last of the barges had cleared the sill, it would be a simple matter of tying off to the downstream guide wall, closing the gate and refilling the chamber to receive the tow boat and the last six barges. Once the water dropped, the pilot would nudge his load forward to re-connect with the first nine. It's a slow but necessary process to put a gigantic payload on its way to who-knows-what-project. A wall to prevent river bank erosion? A road-building project? An architectural masterpiece? We'd never know. Dehydrated and sunburned but curiously exultant we got back into the camper, turned the air on high and continued our journey. Footnote: I wrote most of this column and last week's before Sept. 11. When we returned to the river Sept. 21, a steady stream of barges was hauling freight we had not seen before: military vehicles and armored cars by the thousands, and locals tells us the access roads are now closed to the public.
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